Combat Ribbons
by lanalucy
Summary: Prompt: K/L, ribbon, vacation


_Lee,_

_I'm sorry to spring this on you this way, but I just couldn't do it face to face without breaking down. The past few months have been horrible._

_I hate the way we've been fighting, and I feel like we're both at the ends of our ropes._

_I'm going to take a break - I've got a bunch of leave time banked, down to the use it or lose it wire, and this is a good time to take it. I've got a lot of things to think about, and I need a clear head for it. We both do._

_When you're ready, IF you're ready, come find me. _

_Love, Kara_

_p.s._

_That ribbon you're holding? Take it to the place we had dinner that first time. The owner has an envelope for you. She'll only give it to you if you show her the ribbon. There are five of them, and each one will tell you where to go next. The last one will tell you where I am._

_Before you barrel out the door to go get the first one, make sure I'm what you really want. If you're not all in on us, I don't want you to come after me. _

_p.p.s._

_I'm taking three weeks. If I haven't seen you by the end of those three weeks, I'll make arrangements to get my stuff out of your place._

Lee looked at the ribbon crumpled in his hand and wondered when their place had become his place again, and why it hurt so much for her to say it. They had been fighting. About everything. Money, even though they had more than she thought. The amount of traveling she had to do for work. The nights he didn't even come home from the office. Having kids. How many days it had been since they had actually spoken to each other. How long it had been since they'd last had sex. Whose turn it was to do the dishes or take out the trash or even call for takeout if they were both home and hungry. Everything.

Still, he wasn't ready to give up on her. On them. He hated that she'd left it all on him, because there was no way he could take time off work right now.

He slumped heavily onto the barstool, head in his hands. He thought about it for all of half a minute, because really, there was only one choice. If that choice was between having a job or having Kara, he'd live under a bridge if it meant he could be with her. Not that he'd have to.

He went to the bedroom to pack, dialing his human resources liaison on the way. Family emergency, he'd say. They couldn't refuse him, no matter how much they needed him there. And Kara was his family, and figuring out how to hang on to her was an emergency, so it would technically be true.

Kara had carefully chosen places to leave the envelopes. They were all places that held special meaning to them as a couple, and maybe making him walk back through those memories would remind him what they were together, the way it had her. She desperately hoped so, because she didn't know what she'd do if he never showed up. She wasn't ready to be just Kara after being Lee&Kara for so long.

She tipped her face into the sun, letting the breeze dry the tears on her face. One day down.

The second day she spent lying on a chaise on the beach, watching the families around her, contemplating what had brought her here, to this time and this place.

For nearly five years now, it had been her job to train the Viper nuggets that came her way. She'd come up with a plan for specialized training, and when the word came down that Fleet had approved it on a trial basis, that word had included the "suggestion" that she be the trainer - the program would succeed or fail all on her efforts. Only the top three from each class came to her, and she spent an entire semester with those three nuggets, taking them to every planet in the Colonies, teaching them to take off and land in every kind of terrain and weather, how to hump out if they crashed, how to recover the black box to protect its information from enemies. The finale, both their graduation test and their reward for making it all the way through, was to visit a Battlestar and spend a week learning how to run a CAP, how to make combat landings in the zero grav of space, and how to shoot down Cylons. That part had been a hard sell, but apparently someone high up in the Fleet believed as she did: the Colonial Fleet needed to be ready when, not if, the Cylons came back. She'd used her connection to Bill to make Galactica the ship they visited. Hands-on, all the way. He heartily approved, and she looked forward to spending that week with him twice a year. It was special for her nuggets, too, to get their graduation pins from an Admiral of the Fleet.

On her last trip a few weeks ago, she'd been dragging ass so bad that Bill had made her visit Cottle while she was there. That was what had changed everything.

_"You're not getting enough rest," Cottle had said, and she'd been relieved. For about a second. "You're going to need all the rest you can get if you're going to have a baby, Thrace."_

_Next thing she knew, she was lying in one of his hospital beds with Bill sitting there perusing paperwork. 'Hey, Old Man. Does he call you every time a pilot passes out?"_

_"Nope. Just the Majors who are Viper pilots." His smile creased his face, and she warmed at the love obvious in his expression._

Her face crumpled, remembering the compassion in his eyes. He hadn't said a word, but she knew that Cottle had told him. And Bill knew that she'd never wanted kids.

In just a few short weeks, she'd become attached to this thing, though. It was a little piece of Lee, something tangible she could hold in her arms some day. When she let herself think about it, she realized she wanted that. But not without him.

She closed her eyes, letting the rhythm of the ocean waves lull her into a half-doze.

She'd be giving something up either way - either the baby or the job - and she didn't want do either one alone. She still hadn't made any decisions, except one: she wasn't telling Lee. He either wanted them to work or he didn't, and until she knew for sure, she couldn't make the final decision. Once she'd decided, she'd tell him, if she was keeping it. She knew firsthand how much it sucked not to have both parents.

It took him five days to find her. Five long and terrifying days. He misread one of the clues and had to backtrack once he figured out what he'd done. He'd lost a day to a stupid mistake. He didn't want to lose her that way. He didn't want her to think for one second that she meant less to him than his job, and when he was alone on each of those first four nights, he was afraid he was one day closer to having to learn to live without her.

He got to the resort and checked himself in, the smallest room they offered. Better to have the room and not need it. There was no answer at Kara's door, so he found a concierge and asked if she'd left a note for him. He walked slowly out the beachside doors of the resort, nervously wiping his hands on his pants. He stood at the edge of the shade looking through the light crowd. _ There!_ She was the only person on the beach alone this morning. He made his way over, scared to death that nothing he said would be enough. Deep inside, he'd always dreaded the day Kara would get bored and walk away from him. He stood, ten feet away, taking in everything. She looked terrible. And gorgeous. He could see the tear tracks dried into her cheeks, and hated himself for being the cause. _Now or never, Adama._

"Hey."

"Hi, Lee."

She didn't open her eyes or sound surprised to see him. In fact, her voice had no inflection at all. _ Frak! Now that the moment's here, I have no clue what to say._ Finally, he opted for the bald truth. "I don't want to lose you, Kara. Tell me what I have to do to make you want to stay."

"It isn't you, Lee."

_Gods, no. Not that._

"It isn't _just_ you, anyway. We're both going to have to make some changes if we want to last. Drastic changes."

"Anything, Kara. Just please tell me what I have to do."

She held a hand up. He knelt and held it to his lips. The corner of her mouth quirked and she finally opened her eyes. "That was nice, Lee. Maybe now you can help me up."

He flushed, feeling as foolish as he'd felt during one of their early dates. He'd never known what to expect from her, and had frequently felt like he was constantly three steps behind. He held out his arm, waited until she had a grip on him, and brought her carefully upright.

"Why don't we go to our room?"

_Our room! Thank gods_. "I - uh - I got my own room. I didn't want to assume anything."

She looked up at him, expression blank. "Probably a good call." She took a couple of steps, her feet sinking into the sand, and held her hand out to him. "C'mon, Lee. Let's see if we can fix this."

When they got to the room, he called room service for lunch, and ordered a bottle of wine automatically. Kara shook her head at him. "Just enough for you. I don't feel like drinking today." _Or maybe any day for the next year or two. Gods._

She sat cross-legged on the bed and patted a spot in front of her. When he sat, she said, "First thing you should know, I'm going to make some changes at work. I've got two good options, and which one I take depends entirely on how invested you are in making this work."

"Kara, I -" She put up her hand.

"Don't give me a knee-jerk reaction, Lee. I've thought about almost nothing else for three weeks now. You deserve some time to think about it, too." She straightened her shoulders. "I am going to cut back at work, one way or the other. You should know that. I'm going to find and train someone else, so the burden of this project is no longer all on me. I think after five years, I've proven the training works. It's saved lives, even in non-combat situations. That's documented."

"The choices I have are for someone else to work with me, and we can either train maybe five people at a time, or we can alternate semesters and keep it at three for now." She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then looked directly at him. "Or I can find a replacement for the next couple of years and retain supervisory control, without any daily direct contact with the students. There is a third option, which is for me to retire early. With fifteen years, I'd only get 70% pension. But I'm only 35. I'm pretty sure retiring would drive me crazy, so it's pretty much a last resort."

"Okay. What do you want from me?"

"I want you to decide what your priorities are, Lee. Where I rank."

"I've pretty much thought of nothing else since I got your note, Kara. I'll do anything. Get back in the Fleet. Live in a tent on one of Libran's moons. I'll quit my job. I don't want to lose you, no matter what I have to do."

She reached out and caressed his cheek, a tiny smile curving her lips. "You probably shouldn't quit your job, Adama." _ Okay. Give him a piece of it._ "Last time I was on Galactica, I had to see Cottle, because I passed out on deck." _You don't need to know which deck._ "He said I'm not getting enough rest, so I'm gonna take the rest of the summer off. I'm due anyway. I haven't taken a substantial break since I started the project."

Lee's face paled and his mouth opened and closed. Finally, he managed to get out, "Are you sick? Do I need to take a leave of absence? Gods, Kara. You can't die on me!"

She launched herself across the foot or so of bed between them. _Thank gods I can answer this truthfully._ "No. I'm not sick. I just need to take some time off. Get my priorities straight, same as you."

He squeezed her so tight she heard a rib creak. When he spoke again, his voice was thick with unshed tears. "Please, Kara. I need you. If you need to stop working, do it. We can afford it."

Something in his voice was off enough that she pushed away from him to examine his face, except he wouldn't look at her. "Lee? What are you talking about?" He shook his head. She put a finger under his chin, making him meet her gaze. "What are you saying?"

He shrugged and tried to pass off a smile. "You know how you've always insisted on paying your half of everything?" She nodded. "I took your money and invested it. We've always lived on just my money. I've made a few lucky guesses."

Her mouth fell open. "How much are we talking about, Lee?"

He squirmed at her intensity. "If you never wanted to work again, you wouldn't have to. There's enough for thirty or forty years. Evenifyouleftme." He studied his hands.

_Oh. Does he really think I want to do that?_ "I'm not leaving you, Lee. Not unless you make me."

"That'll never happen."

"That's not…" _Gods. I have to tell him, don't I? I can't expect him to understand what I mean if I don't tell him. Frak._ "I have a confession to make, too."

His head raised sharply, and he paled again. He looked sick now. "What do you mean?"

"I've been keeping a secret from you. It's actually what made me admit something was wrong, realize that I had to decide what was important to me, that we had to decide what's important to us. To you and to me, and to us as a family."

"Okay. Just - " he shook his hand between them. "Are you in love with somebody else?"

She had to laugh at that. "Lee, I've been in love with you practically since the moment I met you. I'm not in love with anybody else. But I might be in the near future." She grabbed his hand and squeezed it between hers. "And you might be, too." She looked him straight on.

He shook his head. "No way, Kara. I can't imagine ever loving anybody as much as I love you. Except maybe ki...ids." He studied her face, but she hadn't beaten him at Triad for fifteen years by giving herself away that easily. "Are we - " His hands were crushing hers, not that she noticed. "Are we - having a baby, Kara?"

She pulled her hands from his, and held them up, lifting one finger at a time until she had seven.

"In seven months?" She nodded and he got up off the bed and paced the room furiously, muttering to himself.

"Lee." Nothing. "Leland Adama!" That got his attention. "You and your OCD can make lists later. Right now, you need to come over here and try to make up for the two months it's been since the last time you made love to me."

He looked down at himself, realizing that he hadn't said a word to her in response, and grinned at her sheepishly. "Maybe I should, uh, go get my bag from the other room. So I don't have to sneak around in a towel later."

"We can call down to the front desk and have them bring it. Later, Lee. Much later."


End file.
